Tag: CRM

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia – Multimedia broadcasting Astro has tapped customer relationship management (CRM) company Evergent, to activate monetization for its newest streaming service sooka, launched last June this year.

Through the partnership, Astro will use Evergent’s customer management and monetization tools to support registration and subscription management for sooka. Offering both free ad-supported content and subscription services, sooka unites live international sports programming with popular Malaysian dramas and entertainment programs.

For Euan Smith, chief executive officer of TV and group chief operations officer at Astro, the company’s mission is to provide Malaysians with entertaining and informative content, reaching as many customers as possible through the most popular platforms and devices.

“Through our partnership with Evergent, we are now able to offer multiple pricing options for our new sooka streaming platform while also retaining the ability to unlock new business opportunities as we scale the service. As a result, our customers can choose the pricing model and payment methods that best match their needs, allowing Malaysians to enjoy premium content and live sports anytime, anywhere,” Smith said.

Meanwhile, Vijay Sajja, founder and CEO of Evergent, notes that Astro’s new flexible monetization options, powered by Evergent’s technology, will now make premium content more accessible to millions of Malaysians.

“Through Evergent’s global partnerships, we are able to work together with the most innovative media and entertainment companies in each country or region. Astro is the market leader for Malaysian entertainment and a leader in Southeast Asia, and we are proud to help them further grow their business through the launch of sooka,” Sajja stated.

Sydney, Australia – Australian business leaders are stating their dissatisfaction with their current customer relationship management (CRM) solutions, new research by global software company SugarCRM shows.

According to the report, 49% of Australian sales professionals believe their CRM systems are costing them revenue, suggesting that sales leaders are struggling to ensure teams are spending enough time with customers and can access the data required to build and maintain these vital relationships.

Furthermore, the report shows that 52% of sales professionals in Australia believe that their CRM systems are unfit for purpose, while customer churn is costing mid-market companies an average of US$5.5M each per year. 

For Craig Charlton, CEO of SugarCRM, the recent data reflects the greater change in customer behavior, and businesses around the world are facing a customer relationship crisis.

“Sales teams are bogged down with administration and stuck with an inaccurate picture of the customer with little advance notice or insight into customer churn. These findings are a wake-up call for companies relying on the market-leading incumbents in CRM with software that is tuned to steady-state and known customer behaviors,” Charlton said.

The research also found that 53% of sales leaders are fatigued and frustrated with the CRM admin burden placed on their sales teams, which is taking them away from customer-facing activities. Indeed, sales reps are only spending 54% of their time selling. Furthermore, over half of sales reps in Australia (52%) reported their customer churn increased in the last 12 months, with 52% of respondents having trouble predicting when customers would churn. 

Lastly, upon reflection, almost half (48%) of those sales professionals reported not knowing why customers churned, while 50% of Australian sales leaders admit that they cannot access customer data across marketing, sales, and service systems, leaving customer-facing team members without a clear picture of their customers.

“The gap in customer data, the millions of dollars lost to churn, and the lack of insight, prevents sales and business leaders from acquiring the intelligence they need to make both vital strategic and tactical decisions. Companies that close the data gaps and improve the accuracy and completeness of their customer data, stand to improve retention, increase revenue, and gain more predictable business outcomes,” SugarCRM said in a press statement.

Singapore – Businesses in Singapore have shown a greater interest in improving their customer experience (CX) through various strategies, despite 2020 being a disruptive year for far-reach transformation, new report from customer relationship management Zendesk shows.

According to the Zendesk Customer Experience (CX) Trends Report 2021, Singapore businesses have witnessed a 22% increase in average weekly support requests, and nearly half of customers or49%, in Singapore say that experience is more important to them now compared to a year ago. Meanwhile, 77% of local companies – the second highest in the APAC region – say their organization prioritizes CX more than they did a year ago.

“We’ve seen companies in APAC embrace digitalization at an incredible speed this year in response to the dramatic shifts in the operating landscape they’ve had to navigate. Customer experience has never been more important, and we think this accelerated adoption of technology is likely to continue in 2021,” said Wendy Johnstone, chief operating officer for APAC at Zendesk.

The study’s recent statistics support data from IT service management firm Gartner that 91% of organizations said that CX was one of the primary goals of their digital business transformation efforts.

“Organizations need to ensure they have the right strategies, processes, and technology in place to empower customer support teams and drive business success,” Johnstone added.

Additional findings among Singaporeans include half of customers preferring to use embedded messaging when they engage with businesses, such as on websites or mobile apps, while one out of five managers (21%) and one out of four (27%) of agents state that they don’t have the right analytics tools to measure success for remote teams and work with it. 

In addition, 81% of Singaporeans are willing to spend more with a company that offers a good customer experience, which is the highest in the region. The report also shows that 83% of Singaporeans will take their business elsewhere following bad experiences.

“Facing continued volatility, service, and support, organizations must find ways to keep up with their customers. Customer experience leaders cited the ability to quickly adapt to the evolving needs of customers as their biggest challenge in 2020 and the highest priority going forward,” said Zendesk. 

Toronto, Canada – Customer experience (CX) management and customer insights platform Alida has recently announced a new slew of products and services, developed with direct feedback from their customers.

Alida’s initial product release for their Winter 2021 release is the Alida Video, which helps brands harness video to amplify their customers’ voices. Through Alida Video, brands can easily capture customer-recorded video feedback, uncover authentic, deep insights, and inform stakeholders and decision makers at the speed of business, all in a unified platform.

Meanwhile, enhancements to existing features include improvement to the platform’s deep insight feature Alida Sparq and broad feedback feature Alida Surveys.

With the improvements on the Alida CXM & Insights Platform, users can expect the following:

  • Hub Newsletter Redesign for brands to better engage their Alida Sparq insight community members and stakeholders with more visual and content-rich newsletters
  • Quotas for administrators to control the number of responses to a survey or a set of questions
  • Mobile Survey Image Enhancements to improve the respondent experience
  • Recodes & Rollups as an Early Access Program (EAP) for users to create new custom variables based on a dataset and analyze data from a different view

Included in the CXM & Insights Platform are also updates on Alida Touchpoint, including NPS® via Quick Polls, that enable organizations to keep a pulse check on brand perception. Brands can now place activities in mobile applications to engage customers with on-brand micro-surveys designed to collect contextual feedback.

“In today’s global climate, video has become an integral mode of communication to engage and connect with people. It is imperative that brands use it to humanize their customers’ emotions and glean accurate context, to put insights into action and build a great customer experience,” said Riaz Raihan, president of products and engineering at Alida. 

He added, “We are thrilled to provide our clients with the added value of video to deeply understand and analyze their customers by hearing and seeing them talk directly.”

Alida has also launched its FS Industry solution, specifically catered for the benefit of financial services clients. It has enhanced its CXM framework, with features such as ‘Case Management’ for case creation on the platform for customer follow up, ‘Data Lake’ for accumulating various organizational data sources in one platform, ‘Crosstab Analysis’ for checking survey data by various categories like demographic, and ‘Configurable Dashboards for Alida Surveys’ for creating a dashboard for Alida Surveys.

Alida, formerly known as Vision Critical, and headquartered in Toronto, Canada; has recently expanded its presence in the Asia Pacific. 

Singapore – Pan-Asian retailer Dairy Farm Group is leveraging its digital transformation strategies by adding API platform Mulesoft, CRM company Salesforce and data software company Tableau to its digital strategy platform.

An initial step undertaken by the retailer is launching its digital rewards club called “yuu”, wherein partner brands and coalition partners are integrated into the yuu platform to allow customers access and redeem points all within a platform.

“With MuleSoft, we are able to connect different systems from multiple brands using an API-led approach to roll out new services in a reduced timeframe. With an omnichannel customer experience across all our brands, we can better manage each customer’s journey and their preferred communication channels with Salesforce Marketing Cloud,” Crystal Chan, IT director for Dairy Farm Group said.

Aside from the digital rewards launch, Daily Farm Group’s current digital transformation strategies focus on the aspect of improving project delivery speed. The retailer will utilize API technology to further improve point of sale (PoS) and e-commerce systems that will create synergy between its online and offline channels. Furthermore, the APIs can be also used to provide new customer experience strategies such as providing curated content, news, and promotions.

The yuu rewards club rolls out to key markets Hong Kong and Macau, where the retailer holds about over 10 household brands in more than 2,000 stores.

Singapore – India-headquartered IT and consulting firm Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) has partnered with global technology company Zoho to adopt its solutions in customer relationship management, IT service management, and e-commerce for its global-wide businesses.

Within the partnership, TCS will utilize Zoho’s technological application stack in data analytics, AI business leverage, and unified search to help improve their clients’ approach to CX strategy, design, and customer insights as well as in marketing, sales, and service transformation.

“TCS has a business-led approach to consulting and enterprise transformation. Zoho takes the same approach to its technology, offering a vertically integrated platform of leading business applications and services. We are confident that through TCS’ reach and influence in the market across 46 countries, more enterprise organizations globally will experience the benefits of Zoho’s deep technology stack and world-class applications,” said Sridhar Vembu, co-founder and CEO of Zoho Corporation.

Furthermore, the alliance will allow future business clients to explore new revenue opportunities and gain operational efficiency, whether from remote or in-office locations.

“Enterprises are adopting best-of-breed product suites for customer service functions, because they provide the digital power and flexibility required to create the right engaging customer experience at the right moment,” said Aarti Devi, global head of customer experience management and enterprise application services at TCS.